'I wish IVF had never been invented' It's brought joy to so many. But, as the scientist behind IVF dies, SAMANTHA BRICK says it's given her nothing but heartache...

False promises: Some women achieve miracle babies through IVF. But for others, like me, it offers only the devastating cruelty of false promise

Last week, after doing the weekly shop, I was putting my groceries away in the large American-style fridge which dominates my kitchen.

As I went to close the door, my gaze was drawn to the compartments in the lower half of the fridge and my good mood instantly evaporated — I haven’t dared to open those drawers for weeks.

Inside them are thousands of pounds’ worth of fertility drugs, which need to be stored at a low temperature — vials, syringes and other paraphernalia. Today, they serve only as a painful remainder from my recent second, failed attempt at IVF.

My husband, Pascal, and I paid more than £6,000 to be treated at a European clinic with an excellent reputation for helping older women such as myself — I am 42 — to become mothers.

Sadly, our attempt failed. The four eggs my body had produced simply weren’t viable, and they ‘died’ within hours of being retrieved from my ovaries.

It is understandable, then, that as an all-too-willing (some might say gullible) consumer in the baby- making business, I track all fertility-related news with remarkable zeal.

So when I read that the test-tube baby pioneer, Sir Robert Edwards, had died, I experienced an overwhelming range of emotions. I felt sadness for his family but, to my discomfort and shame, I also felt a jolt of anger towards a man whose work has allowed the medical profession to play God with human life.

Irrational as it might sound to those who have never been through the heartbreak of unsuccessful fertility treatment, I see this eminent professor as unwittingly responsible for the agony I have endured since discovering, four years ago, that my husband and I are unable to conceive a child together naturally.

If IVF didn’t exist, I believe we would have, eventually, got on with our lives.

Instead, we submitted ourselves to the rollercoaster of fertility treatment.

And our world has been on hold, in a terrible emotional limbo, ever since. I recognise that mine is a controversial perspective — and yes, IVF has brought untold joy to countless childless women. But I have first-hand experience of the physical and emotional anguish you endure when the expensive, invasive treatment Sir Robert developed happens to fail.

For every woman lucky enough to fulfil her dream of motherhood, there are many more disillusioned women like me who remain childless.

Lives have been destroyed as well as created. Frequently, marriages do not survive the turmoil unleashed by IVF. There are also those who, years after their IVF has failed, are still paying off the cost of their extortionately-priced treatment.

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I admit that I wouldn’t be writing this if IVF had given me the child I longed for — but it hasn’t.

And while private clinics and new mothers tout the statistics and celebrate the arrival of their elusive offspring, IVF is a long way from the miracle the fertility industry would have us believe.

DID YOU KNOW?

One in six couples will seek the help of an infertility specialist at some point

Let’s not forget that it is an industry — one which in the UK alone is worth at least £500 million, with 59.7 per cent of IVF cycles paid for privately in 2011. Today, it is a business first and foremost — and one which has depressingly low success rates.

At best, IVF offers a one-in-four chance of having a baby — a rate which rapidly diminishes with a woman’s age.

I never intended to be in my early 40s and contemplating fertility treatment, which offers a woman of my age at most a 12 per cent chance of success.

I married my first husband at 31. My world collapsed, swiftly followed by our relationship, when, 18 months later, he informed me that he wasn’t sure he wanted children after all.

Problems: I was 39 when we discovered that Pascal, then 49, had a low sperm count - a result of a blood infection he had contracted during an accident at work

I met my present husband, Pascal, when I was 36. Our optimistic plan to have a baby began 12 months later, just after we married.

But after a year of trying to conceive, sadly, I still wasn’t pregnant.

More than once, I have thought bitterly that if IVF hadn’t been invented, then at this stage of my quest — when a woman’s fertility is known to fall dramatically — I’d have closed the door on any prospect of motherhood.

Undoubtedly I would have grieved for a period of time, but then I would somehow have moved on.

Instead, the IVF carrot was dangled in front of us.

Two years of invasive, all-consuming medical investigations followed.

I was 39 when we discovered that Pascal, then 49, had a low sperm count — a result of a blood infection he had contracted during an accident at work.

More than once, I have thought bitterly
that if IVF hadn’t been invented, then at this stage of my quest — when a
woman’s fertility is known to fall dramatically — I’d have closed the
door on any prospect of motherhood

Unfortunately, during the time it took for doctors to make this diagnosis, my fertility had plummeted.

Even though I’d been told I had a minimal chance of conceiving via IVF, we set off on our fertility journey, naively assuming that we would be among the lucky ones.

Our first round took place under the care of our nearest hospital in Toulouse, France — a four-hour return journey from our home in the village of Gindou.

Before treatment commenced, medical staff explained the odds of conception, as well as the risks. In some women, the treatment has been linked to an acceleration of hormone-related cancers in the breasts and ovaries.

There are unsettling stories, shared on internet message boards, that medics themselves don’t allow their wives or partners to undergo this invasive fertility treatment because of the health risks involved.

All this — and yet IVF is still the automatic choice for intelligent, university-educated women such as myself.

Failures: As I write this, I honestly don't believe I could put myself or my husband through another cycle of IVF. I'm simply not strong enough to face the consequences, should it fail

Our first round of IVF began in February last year. Anyone who has undergone fertility treatment on a state health service will understand when I say that it felt like the equivalent of factory farming. So it didn’t surprise me when, despite my producing ten eggs and having two embryos transferred, the IVF attempt in April last year didn’t result in a pregnancy.

I began my second IVF cycle in December, putting my life on hold for two months.

This time, desperate to improve my chances, I didn’t work during the course of IVF and we paid to have private treatment.

For five weeks I took drugs to shut down the hormonal system which controls ovulation, creating the effect of an early menopause.

Then, for two weeks, I injected myself with drugs to stimulate my ovaries into producing an excess of eggs.

Hormone levels in my blood were monitored daily, and my reproductive system scanned with a similar frequency.

When we found out that this second treatment hadn’t worked, I was so desperate that I contemplated ending my life. Such was my anguish at my failure to become a mother.

In moments of optimism or, perhaps, madness, I have indulged myself over the past four years. I’ve selected a room at home for the nursery, bought baby toys, chosen children’s names — and to what end?

The treatment has failed twice now, and the emotional fall-out remains nothing short of devastating. I am prone to weeping fits and depressive episodes, and I cannot be around pregnant women or young children.

Then there are the side-effects: acne, weight gain, greasy hair, night horrors and severe abdominal pain.

I didn’t just suffer during the treatment — I’m still experiencing these symptoms today, three months later.

On receiving the Nobel Prize in 2010, Sir Robert Edwards claimed: ‘The most important thing in life is having a child. Nothing is more special than a child.’

I, more than anyone I know, agree with his sentiments. Yet I also believe that there are some things we simply shouldn’t meddle with — and artificially creating life is one of them.

Some women achieve miracle babies through IVF. But for others, like me, it offers only the devastating cruelty of false promise

As I write this, I honestly don’t believe I could put myself or my husband through another cycle of IVF. I’m simply not strong enough to face the consequences, should it fail.

I may have tried to cheat Mother Nature twice, but I’m coming round to the opinion that not all women are destined to become mothers.

Even so, I can’t bring myself to throw out the fertility medication in the bottom of my fridge — because of the remote hope it affords me.

Unfortunately for me, the genie is already out of the bottle; I simply can’t shake off the notion that one day, perhaps, I could be a mother after all.

Some women achieve miracle babies through IVF. But for others, like me, it offers only the devastating cruelty of false promise.